Monday, 17 October 2016

How many miles have you walked for men that never held your feet in their lap? - Warsan Shire

Men.
Snakes.
Sexual predators.

Vice in their eyes , lies tainted with cigarette smoke in their mouth , the world lying flat in the palm of their hands, their eyes on your chest, the curve of your hips, watching you out of the corner of their eyes , their tongues curving around the word baby, their lips pretending they're sealed, though they'll splinter your reputation in a second, their hands everywhere they shouldn't be.

You sit with these boys in class,you take the bus home with these men , you go to work clocking in hours with them ,

but god forbid they see you as anything but a conquest,
a mission,
an escapade
a foreign flavour they crave,

they try to get you to fall in love,
Smiling when you fall and break your face against the cold stone pavement of reality
telling you falling in love hurts while they
lick the blood off your face
But honey, love doesn't taste like stones in your mouth and humiliation

they want the landscape in the background of their homecoming story to be the wind in your hair ,
they want your name on a list of 'achievements' next to your underwear,

they see you , and god forbid they think of anything apart from your breasts,
god forbid they think of anything resembling consent,

honey, what a shame you weren't born with independence between your legs like them,
what a shame you're soft down there like a pillow to soak in their unwanted advances ,
their sugar, their baby ,

their smiles like poison dragged across your mouth ,
their appetite for the syrup in your tongue unquenchable, you gasp ,
you turn away. But you.

you shock them.

A girl with a mouth full of words like razor sharp blades,
ripping through their veins,
breathing living speaking rejection,
the audacity your speech bleeds,
the shock that you claim your body your own by covering it completely,
declaring it not theirs to look at
to touch
to speak about
to think about

and now the vile monsters are clawing to get at you , to touch, to get a taste, they fetishise your fucking toes, your feet, they imagine worse, they jack off to the way you walk , they open their mouth to swallow you whole ,and these primal beasts cannot process your brain , your thinking , your natural innate urge to say no, no , your inborn instinct to kick them in the crotch and set their lungs ablaze with dismissal , and risk waking the sleeping dragon, you take the risk every single time, even though it could take your life.